My family - mother, father, four sisters and three brothers - lived in a flat in Hackney, London. My father worked in the Post Office and my mother, when she had the time, worked in service. I was evacuated from the London area at the outbreak of war in 1939 with three of my siblings. Eve and I are twins and were five years old at the time. Dolly was four years older than us, and Stanley was two years older.

The government, fearful of the catastrophic effects that an aerial attack would have upon the children living in the large populated areas of England, had devised a method that they felt would save the younger children from bombing raids in the event of war. I later learned that the process was called Operation Pied Piper. Hindsight revealed later that the evacuation was not necessary but who would have known at the time?

We were first sent to Folkestone, Kent, where the government people had listings of volunteer families who lived throughout England, and of other countries that would accept and care for the children who were being evacuated from London. From Folkestone, we were allocated (yes, that is the word used) to certain towns and villages where we would have a better chance of surviving the war.

There were four of us from the Bloomfield family who fit the age profile and the government did the proper thing by sending all of us to the same town, Tredegar in south Wales. There were no families who would accept four young children but there was one who would take two of us, Mr and Mrs Wendt (or Went), of Walter Street, Tredegar. They had no children of their own and this situation might have been a godsend for them. Then again, maybe not!

Mr Wendt must have been a coal miner because he came home each day covered with black soot. Evelyn and I were to live with them until conditions changed or the status of the war changed in our favour and that the danger had passed, thus permitting us to return to our family.

Eve and Stan revisit the Williams house in Charles Street (left)
and the Wendts' house in Walter Street (right)

Stanley was to live with a Mr and Mrs Williams of 101 Charles Street, who had children of their own but would accept another child. Dolly went to live with a Mrs. Whitchurch, a schoolteacher. She must have been a good teacher because Dolly came home with much more knowledge than the others of us.

Eve and I shared a bedroom of our own in the Wendt household. I remember vividly that the house was on a corner and that, by going out the front door and turning left, I could see a field with grazing sheep. I remember that the town, and all about it, was so clean and pretty, rolling green hills around, and so peaceful. Mrs Wendt would bundle Eve and I up well and we would be sent outside to play and would have to remain outside until they determined that it was time to come inside.

I also remember snow, a lot of snow, and Eve and I would look into the windows of other homes and wish that we could go inside like the other children. That is not to say that the family was unkind but that they had some strange ideas of how children should be treated. We were required to have a cup of hot chocolate each evening before bedtime. I didn't like it then and I still don't like hot chocolate. While in Tredegar we did occasionally see Stan and Dolly but not often nor for a very long period of time.

In 1942, we were informed that our Mum would be coming to get us and take us home. Our place of residence would no longer be in London but in Southend-On-Sea where my Dad had inherited a house on Fairfax Drive from our grandmother who had recently died. Actually, Eve and I had no memory of our Mum, only that we had been told by the Wendts that we had one and that she would be coming for us. We remember a short little lady walking toward us on the sidewalk as we were outside the house at the time. When she got to us, she said simply, "I'm your Mum and I've come to take you home!" We have no knowledge of the procedure that she went through with the Wendt Family.

We were soon on a train headed back to London where we switched trains and proceeded on to Southend. The new home was as strange to us as was the home that we went to in Tredegar, with one huge difference - all our brothers and sisters welcomed us back with lots of hugs. After a few days had passed, it was as though we had never been gone.

When my Dad died in 1947, it left Mum with a house full of children and a new set of twins to take care of, a total of ten children. Mum had a very hard time of it what with the Widow's Pension and the small amount of money that the government gave her to take care of them. All the older children had to go out and get a job almost as soon as they became of age so that they could both pay their room and board, but also to contribute toward the upkeep of all the family.

I married Vernon B. Byrd, a Staff Sergeant in the American Air Force, who was stationed at RAF Wethersfield, Essex. We had four children and now live in northern California.

Eve married Ted New, a Londoner and limousine operator. They now live in Shoeburyness, Essex, and have a grown up daughter.

Sylvia Byrd nee Bloomfield - California - February 2007

(Sylvia passed away due to lung cancer in October 2007)